MCC looking to make “Cinderella” run in NJCAA tournament

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (WTOK) - The MCC Eagles are feeling inspired by the NCAA upsets.

Meridian has been following the March Madness tournament and got to watch Fairleigh Dickinson upset Purdue in round one of the NCAA tournament.

Seeing that Cinderella story reminded this team that anything can happen.

Sophomore guard and Meridian native, Makeem Roberts said, “Well it’s not a lot of pressure it does make you want to go hard. Cause if you see somebody- the sixteen seed beating the first seed we feel like we can do it too. So we just want to go out and compete like we always do.”

Head coach James Green said, “We’ve talked about that and we’ve talked about playing in the 6:30 p.m. game against a team that’s an hour and a half- a couple hours away. And we told them they picked that so they would be the home team. But our team all year has gotten a lot of satisfaction from going on the road and having lots of people cheer against them. And fight against that with only us as a group. We’ve seen those situations before. Hopefully we’ll be ready to respond in that. And if we can do that I think we can give ourselves a chance. Obviously it appears we are an underdog. But we’ve been an underdog in a lot of games this year and the games will have to be decided in those 40 minutes or if it takes more than that but we’ve got to go out and concentrate on who we are. Be true to ourselves and I think if we do that we will give ourselves a chance.”

MCC is the underdogs going up against Dodge City in round one of the NJCAA tournament. They will tip off at 6:30 p.m. on Monday.

A special thanks to MCC for partnering with WTOK and sponsoring our coverage of the national tournament.

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